This morning I woke up before anyone else in the house. There was stillness, and quiet, and the flood of possibilities. The most important of which involved me making the thousand mile journey from the bedroom to the kitchen without hitting a creaky floorboard to drink in at least five minutes of precious solitude, a worthwhile risk.

Mornings are my worst time of day. It’s been this way as long as I can remember, as long as I’ve lived in a house with other people. The problem is that people make noise, and I think I'm allergic to it. I just can't get used to it because mornings seem like the perfect time for slow, QUIET, creative happenings.

The air is warm, the days are long, and out of nowhere there is an uncontrollable urge to flee from highway noise and work schedules to roll on grass, climb trees, and play in water. My husband and I look at each other for a long time... "Are we ready for this?"

I've been getting my share of lessons in acceptance lately. I choose to see it this way rather than as a run of bad luck because without fail I am more grateful, more clear-seeing, and more resourced on the other side of these stretches. When it's happening I obviously just want it all to go away.

I began writing about my experiences as the mom of a child with severe food allergies (FPIES) to share a difficult story I didn't otherwise know how to tell. In the process I've been gifted some powerful stories from other mothers -- moms who felt alone and scared and found a way to tune into their hearts anyway. Many are working to heal their children without a lot of support or guidance.

Healing is a process. I find myself seeking, moving, grounding, and breathing my way through the layers, discovering more about letting go with each wave. Returning to what is, over and over again while balancing that against the hope of what will be.

Last year during the holidays we were in the dark. I was in the final leg of a race to find an alternative solution to exclusively breast feeding my toddler on a diet of eight foods. We were exhausted and lost. At that point we had not yet heard of the term FPIES (Food Protein-Induced Enterocolitis Syndrome), and were feeling hopelessly alone. We didn't know what we needed then, much less how to ask for it.

Last year on Thanksgiving my food-challenged child was still nursing which meant that I was eating the only eight foods I knew for sure kept her safe. An extended family gathering was out of the question based on my need to keep my head in the elimination diet game. I was able to sustain Lemon by the grace of God and that grace did not extend to sitting at a table full of my favorite foods and politely saying "no thank you."

Tomorrow marks the end of our third week of Operation Heal Lemon's Gut. She has been on a horribly depressing diet of nothing more than pastured lamb broth, coconut oil and fermented kraut juice while waiting for unwanted bacteria, yeast, and God-only-knows-what to flush from her system. I stopped feeding her the hard-earned list of eight "safe" foods she's been eating for months in hopes of re-setting the dial and starting over with the introduction of egg yolk.

...The baby woke every 20 minutes last night with belly pain and you're pretty sure you nursed her back to sleep 17 times. There may have been one stretch of an hour and a half of sleep but there's no way to know for sure and it doesn't make a difference because either way you feel like that sacrificial mouse your cat left on the doorstep as a sign of devotion.

I've been thinking a lot about connection this week. Last Saturday I spent the day with a group of courageous women all searching for deeper connection - to themselves, to their children, to their spiritual and emotional journeys as mothers, and to a larger community of women who are all doing this dance of balancing what's on the inside with what's happening on the outside.

A year ago I could barely see the forest for the trees. We are by no means out of the woods but life is improving. We sleep, we eat, and we play. I am (mostly) the mother I want to be. But times of celebration are hard. They seem to open the floodgates to a full range of emotions that would prevent me from functioning if I felt them like this every day.

After tearing off the band-aid of breastfeeding we watched and waited as my little girl struggled to adjust and accept her fate. Lamb broth. One whiff can send any sane person running for the door. "What is that rotten smell that kicks up every other day?" our neighbors had innocently asked. Oh that? That's just my daughter's main food source. The kitchen walls dripped of it. This was our new normal.

It was a low point. My daughter was 14 months old and eating 3 foods I knew were safe for her - avocado, coconut, and pastured lamb. I was still producing her main food source, breast milk clear of all food proteins that her body couldn't break down. Every day I ate the same 10 foods, each prepared meticulously in my home kitchen. The slightest slip up in what I ate resulted in a range of reactions in her from hives and profuse vomiting to congestion, hourly waking...